Kenneth Faried didn’t sign a five-year, $60 million contract extension.
He couldn’t have.
Despite Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports reporting the contrary, extensions to rookie-scale contracts – with one exception – can be for just four seasons. The exception is when a team makes someone its designated player by giving him a five-year extension to a rookie-scale deal, but designated players must receive a max salary and 7.5 percent annual raises.
For Faried to be the Nuggets’ designated player, based on the NBA’s projected 2015-16 salary cap, his five-year extension would be worth about $89 million – far more than the reported $60 million.
So, something is getting lost in translation here.
Here are three possibilities for the actual terms:
Five-year, $89 million extension
Maybe Wojnarowski has the number of years correct and the dollar amount wrong.
Faried will make $2,249,768 this season, the final year of his rookie deal. His extension would begin in 2015-16, a season with a yet-to-be-determined cap.
Any max contract extension does not have a known salary until the July before that season begins. Perhaps, $60 million was just a really poor estimate of a five-year max contract contract that begins in 2015-16.
Four-year, $60 million
Maybe Wojnarowski has the dollar amount correct and the number of years wrong.
Again, simple enough, just one incorrect figure.
A four-year extension is the longest legal extension under the max – and $60 million should fall under the four-year max, which projects to be $68,985,747.
Four-year, $57,750,232 extension
Maybe Wojnarowski was referring to the total value of Faried’s contract – one season on the rookie deal, four seasons on the extension.
If that’s the case, Faried’s extension would be $57,750,232 over four years ($60 million minus his 2014-15 salary of $2,249,768 ).
That means his average annual salary during the extension would be $14,437,558 – a healthy bump over the $12 million per year it seemed Denver would be paying him.
This is my best guess for the mix up, but it’s just a guess.
With the salary cap set to skyrocket under the new TV deals, it seemed the Nuggets got Faried for a great value. It was just too good to be true.
